Former “American Chopper” star Paul Teutul Sr. returns to TV with CMT’s “Orange County Choppers,” which begins filming next week for an expected fall premiere.

Not only does Teutul find himself on a new network, but, unlike his previous series, he won’t be joined by his son, Paulie Jr., following their years-long estrangement after Paulie walked off “American Chopper” and started his own bike-customizing business.

Teutul: No chance in hell. I think we both knew that. He’s doing his thing and I’m doing my thing.

Q: Did you miss being on TV?

Teutul: I really did. It kind of becomes a way of life when you’ve been doing it for 11 years — like an everyday routine of getting up, going to work and the cameras are there. Everybody becomes like family — like it or not. You’re kind of married to the production. And they want us to build crazy bikes — and what better thing could there be than doing what I love doing and being paid for it?

Q: Were you actively shopping a show?

Teutul: We were out there after we were done with Discovery. I told my agent, ‘Let’s try to get on another network,’ and [CMT] immediately picked us up. We made a phone call and they were like, ‘OK, we’ll take it.’ I couldn’t have planned it better. I think there was a lot of interference [from Discovery] the last few years — they changed it to the ‘Senior vs. Junior’ thing. Was I really happy about that? I wasn’t. But it got good ratings and everybody made money. It was what it was.

Q: Anything you can tell us about the new show?

Teutul: We just did a bike for [former ‘Jersey Shore’ star] Pauly D. and filmed that for the new show.

Part of the [new] deal is that we actually hired a guy, like a creative director . . . and he’s going to take care of things when I’m not here. We ended up hiring a 23-year-old kid for the job.

Q: Any chance of Paulie Jr. popping up in an episode?

Teutul: You never know what life brings you, but I’d say there’s probably . . . a very low percentage chance of that happening.